Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 1. Labour Questions and Social politics - Conciliation and Arbitration in Labour Disputes. By H. Elmquist
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conciliation and arbitration in labour disputes.
(553
being added to the clause respecting the giving of notice of termination of the
agreement, to the effect that proposals for a fresh agreement shall be handed
in by a stated date and that negotiations to the same end shall be entered into.
In certain cases attempts have been made to secure still more reliable guarantees
against any serious impasse at critical junctures, of which some of the national
agreements afford examples. Thus, in the tobacco industry agreement the
clause laying down the course of action to be pursued for avoidance of
stoppages of work is to remain in force for one year longer than the other clauses
of the agreement that deal with the rates of wages to be paid, etc., the object
being to ensure the continuance of peaceful relations for a space of time after
the agreement proper shall have expired; that device has, moreover, been adopted
elsewhere also. In the building trades the expiration of the national agreement
does not either coincide with that of the local agreement in each case, besides
which it is arranged that the National Arbitration Board shall continue to act
for three months after the expiration of the national agreement. (During that
period of time the prohibition of stoppages of work in relation to the drawing
up of a new agreement shall also be in force.) As regards the non-state
railways and their workpeople, the course of action to be followed in case of
dispute is likewise laid down in a special main agreement, which embodies a
prohibition of strikes and is independent of the particular local agreements; the
latter are to be drawn up and all divergencies of opinion are to be settled in
the last resort by an Arbitration Court. There is furthermore the prescription
that for the industrial interests of those railways an Agreement Board shall be
called into being (with the president of the Arbitration Court as its chairman),
which shall be required, in the event of the main agreement being renounced,
to prepare, and within six months to lay before the several organizations, matured
proposals for another agreement on the lines of the one about to expire. The
typographers’ agreement, however, goes still further towards providing complete
guarantees for the preservation of peace in their section of the labour world,
inasmuch as it prescribes the constitution of a similar Arbitration Board for the
drawing up definitely of a new agreement.
A general survey of the stage of development reached in Sweden by the
movement on the part of the parties to industrial engagements to organize on
their own initiative machinery for conciliation and arbitration, may be considered to
yield the following conclusions: a) that the system has been relatively speaking
largely adopted, inasmuch as the majority of the collective agreements existing
embrace rules, more or less comprehensive in scope, as to the course of action to be
pursued to avoid stoppages of work; b) that permanent conciliation and
arbitration boards have been established for a large number of sections of the labour
world; c) that the conciliation process is resorted to for settling disputes arising
either from a conflict of interests or from the interpretation of existing
agreements, but that the arbitration process as regards most sections of the labour
world is only adopted when disputes arising from interpretation of agreement
clauses are to be decided, it being only in the main in those sections of the
labour world (e. g. railways and printing-offices), where according to general
acceptation stoppages of work ought on no account to be allowed to occur, that
■conflicts of interests arising between employers and employees are also submitted
to the deliberation and decision of an arbitration board; d) that, finally,
definite conciliation and arbitration bodies empowered to come into operation
when collective agreements expire, with a view to settling or preventing the
•occurrence of disputes and to promote the drawing up of fresh agreements, are
still few and far between, though it may be assumed that the cases of their
institution adduced above will be followed by others.
It may be worth while to call attention to the fact, that collective bargaining
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